Nash: Lottery leads to lots of trouble, according to the National Enquirer

Here's a little piece of advice for you: Make friends with my wife. It's for your own good, because she has a plan for when she wins the lottery: She intends to give away a large portion of the winnings to her friends.

For the record, I don't endorse this plan. In fact, I emphatically oppose it, but if she's going to win the lottery I don't want to do anything to make her mad because I know I'm replaceable. Then again, what are the odds that she's actually going to win? Not good.

According to the PBS news show "Frontline," the odds of winning the California Super Lotto are one in 18 million. To put that into perspective, they say that if a person were to buy 50 Lotto tickets every week, he or she could count on winning the jackpot about once every 5,000 years. And, just by way of comparison, your odds of being killed by a bolt of lightning are a comparative slam dunk, one in 30,000. Still, none of this deters my wife.

It's not that she's greedy. She's trying to be "reasonable" about the whole thing. She has her sights set on a $14 million jackpot. She figures the government will take about half of that, leaving her with $7 million. This is where we start to have our differences because, out of that $7 million, she wants to give $1 million to her friends.

I said, "I know we're married, but we're friends, too. Right?" She just gave me the look she reserves for when she knows I'm intentionally missing the point on something. It's a look I receive with some regularity.

But there's a dark side to this whole thing that I'm not sure she recognizes. Winning the lottery isn't always the answer to your problems. A recent article in the National Enquirer told the hard-luck stories of several lottery "winners." The National Enquirer probably isn't your best source for information on investment decisions but, then again, buying a lottery ticket isn't much of an investment, either, and these stories prove it.

A West Virginia man won $315 million in 2002. After he collected his winnings, his granddaughter and her boyfriend both died of overdoses, along with her mother. He was robbed several times and arrested for DUI but, worst of all, friends and relatives constantly asked him for money. Other winners were murdered or succumbed to alcohol or drugs. Fortunately, the Enquirer provided a few tips for future winners.

First, they advised, don't tell anyone that you won. Then they suggested taking the money in installments. It's tough to blow a jackpot if you don't have it; and, of course, hire a financial adviser (I don't recommend my wife). They also recommended donating some of the money to charity. That way, if you blow your winnings, at least you'll have done a little good in the world.

I have a feeling that none of this would change my wife's mind if she won. She's just that kind of person; she'd want to share the joy. For my part, I'd be happy to share the joy; it's the money I want to keep.

I suppose I should just resign myself to the knowledge that my wife is a kind and loving person, not to mention headstrong, and that, if she wins the lottery, some of the money isn't coming home. But for now, I'm not too worried, because she hasn't bought a ticket in years.